Industrial Cluster: Hubei Province Solves The Problem Of Machine Cotton Picking, Seeding And Seedling Formation

Comprehensive supporting facilities of "good varieties+good opportunities+good technology"

Cotton is a strategic material and a major agricultural product in international trade. In recent years, with the rising labor costs, more and more traditional cotton growing areas in the mainland are hard to find cotton. These regions not only have a long tradition of cotton planting, but also farmers have deep feelings for cotton, and also have advantages in land and climate. To maintain the cotton planting in the advantageous cotton regions, it is necessary to reduce the cotton planting cost and improve the production efficiency. It is imperative to develop machine picking cotton.

"The difficulty of seeding is the first problem for the development of mechanized cotton picking in the mainland." Villa, an expert on the post of the national cotton industry technology system and a researcher of the Economic Crops Research Institute of Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the traditional seeding technology relies on the seeding amount to preserve seedlings, and adopts the method of artificial thinning to control density and maintain growth uniformity, which does not meet the requirements of mechanized production. Precision seeding technology is the direction of modern cotton planting.

In this regard, the villa expert team members, through multi-point and multi site tests, started with the selection of machine picked cotton varieties, developed and integrated seven key core technologies of "planting all seedlings at one time" suitable for local machine picked cotton. In addition, the company has developed a special multifunctional machine for machine cotton harvesting, which can complete rotary tillage, suppression, seeding, soil covering, suppression, spraying and other operations at one time. It has achieved a breakthrough from traditional cotton planting of "one seedling in one pot" to machine cotton harvesting of "one seedling in one sowing", which is conducive to the large-scale centralized boll forming, centralized boll opening and one-time machine harvesting of cotton, The key problems in the development of machine picking cotton have been comprehensively solved.

The province will promote 5000 mu machine cotton picking this year

After seeding, the machine picking cotton base also faces a series of checkpoints, such as serious grass damage and difficult chemical control.

The reporter of Hubei Daily learned that the cotton team of Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences has researched and issued the "standardized cultivation technology of machine picked cotton in the Yangtze River Basin" after more than 10 years of scientific research, which was selected as the main cotton production technology model of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in 2022. In 2022, the team will establish a machine picking cotton base in Jianli City, demonstrating that the theoretical seed cotton yield is 272.8 kg/mu, the average planting labor is saved by 50%, and the labor per mu is reduced to 4, reducing labor input, reducing labor intensity, and significantly improving the level of mechanized production, providing technical support for the large-scale promotion of machine picking cotton in Hubei Province and even the Yangtze River Basin. This year, the demonstration area of machine picking cotton in Hubei Province reached 5000 mu.

Industry insiders pointed out that relying on scientific and technological innovation to gradually transform the production mode of transplanted cotton in the mainland, promote the large-scale mechanized cotton oil (wheat) double direct seeding mode, accelerate the improvement of quality and efficiency of the cotton industry in the mainland, which is expected to reverse the downward trend of cotton production, realize the restorative growth of planting area in traditional cotton areas, ensure stable production and supply, and ensure the stable development of agriculture and rural areas.